CHAPTER XIII. POISON
Despite Madonna Paola's dismissal, I remained in Pesaro. Indeed, hadI attempted to leave, it is probable that the Lord Filippo would havedeterred me, for I was much grown in his esteem since the disclosuresthat had earned me the disfavour of Madonna. But I had no thought ofgoing. I hoped against hope that anon she might melt to a kinder mood,or else that by yet aiding her, despite herself, to elude the Borgiaalliance, I might earn her forgiveness for those matters in which sheheld that I had so gravely sinned against her.
The epithalamium, meanwhile, was forgotten utterly and I spent my daysin conceiving wild plans to save her from the Lord Ignacio, only toabandon them when in more sober moments their impracticable quality wasborne in upon me.
In this fashion some six weeks went by, and during the time she neveronce addressed me. We saw much during those days of the Governor ofCesena. Indeed his time seemed mainly spent in coming and going 'twixtCesena and Pesaro, and it needed no keen penetration to discern theattraction that brought him. He was ever all attention to Madonna, andthere were times when I feared that perhaps she had been drawn intoaccepting the aid that once before he had proffered. But these fearswere short-lived, for, as time sped, Madonna's aversion to the man grewplain for all to see. Yet he persisted until the very eve, almost, ofher betrothal to Ignacio.
One evening in early December I chanced, through the purest accident,to overhear her sharp repulsion of the suit that he had evidently beenpressing.
"Madonna," I heard him answer, with a snarl, "I may yet prove to youthat you have been unwise so to use Ramiro del' Orca."
"If you so much as venture to address me again upon the subject," shereturned in the very chilliest accents, "I will lay this matter of yourodious suit before your master Cesare Borgia."
They must have caught the sound of my footsteps in the gallery in whichthey stood, and Ramiro moved away, his purple face pale for once, andhis eyes malevolent as Satan's.
I reflected with pleasure that perhaps we had now seen the last of him,and that before that threat of Madonna's he would see fit to ride hometo Cesena and remain there. But I was wrong. With incredible effronteryand daring he lingered. The morrow was a Sunday, and, on the Tuesday orWednesday following, Cesare Borgia and his cousin Ignacio were expected.Filippo was in the best of moods, and paid more heed to the Governorof Cesena's presence at Pesaro than he did to mine. It may be that heimagined Ramiro del' Orca to be acting under Cesare's instructions.
That Sunday night we supped together, and we were all tolerably gay, thetopic of our talk being the coming of the bridegroom. Madonna's was theonly downcast face at the board. She was pale and worn, and there weredark circles round her eyes that did much to mar the beauty of her angelface, and inspired me with a deep and sorrowing pity.
Ramiro announced his intention of leaving Pesaro on the morrow, and erehe went he begged leave to pledge the beautiful Lady of Santafior,who was so soon to become the bride of the valiant and mighty IgnacioBorgia. It was a toast that was eagerly received, so eager anduproariously that even that poor lady herself was forced to smile,for all that I saw it in her eyes that her heart was on the point ofbreaking.
I remember how, when we had drunk, she raised her goblet--a beautifulchaste cup of solid gold--and drank, herself, in acknowledgment; and Iremember, too, how, chancing to move my head, I caught a most singular,ill-omened smile upon the coarse lips of Messer Ramiro.
At the time I thought of it no more, but in the morning when thehorrible news that spread through the Palace gained my ears, that smileof Ramiro del' Orca recurred to me at once.
It was from the seneschal of the Palace that I first heard that tragicnews. I had but risen, and I was descending from my quarters, when Icame upon him, his old face white as death, a palsy in his limbs.
"Have you heard the news, Ser Lazzaro?" he cried in a quavering voice.
"The news of what?" I asked, struck by the horror in his face.
"Madonna Paola is dead," he told me, with a sob.
I stared at him in speechless consternation, and for a moment I seemedforlorn of sense and understanding.
"Dead?" I remember whispering. "What is it you say?" And I leanedforward towards him, peering into his face. "What is it you say?"
"Well may you doubt your ears," he groaned. "But, Vergine Santissima!it is the truth. Madonna Paola, that sweet angel of God, lies cold andstiff. They found her so this morning."
"God of Heaven!" I cried out, and leaving him abruptly I dashed down thesteps.
Scarce knowing what I did, acting upon an impulsive instinct that was asirresistible as it was unreasoning, I made for the apartments of MadonnaPaola. In the antechamber I found a crowd assembled, and on every facewas pallid consternation written. Of my own countenance I had a glimpsein a mirror as I passed; it was ashen, and my hollow eyes were wild as amadman's.
Someone caught me by the arm. I turned. It was the Lord Filippo, paleas the rest, his affectations all fallen from him, and the man himselfrevealed by the hand of an overwhelming sorrow. With him was a grave,white-bearded gentleman, whose sober robe proclaimed the physician.
"This is a black and monstrous affair, my friend," he murmured.
"Is it true, is it really true, my lord?" I cried in such a voice thatall eyes were turned upon me.
"Your grief is a welcome homage to my own," he said. "Alas, Dio Santo!it is most hideously true. She lies there cold and white as marble, Ihave just seen her. Come hither, Lazzaro." He drew me aside, away fromthe crowd and out of that antechamber, into a closet that had beenMadonna's oratory. With us came the physician.
"This worthy doctor tells me that he suspects she has been poisoned,Lazzaro."
"Poisoned?" I echoed. "Body of God! but by whom? We all loved her. Therewas not in Pesaro a man worthy of the name but would have laid down hislife in her service. Who was there, then, to poison that dear saint?"
It was then that the memory of Ramiro del' Orca, and the look that inhis eyes I had surprised whilst Madonna drank, flashed back into mymind.
"Where is the Governor of Cesena?" I cried suddenly. Filippo looked atme with quick surprise.
"He departed betimes this morning for his castle. Why do you ask?"
I told him why I asked; I told him what I knew of Ramiro's attentions toMadonna, of the rejection they had suffered, and of the vengeance he hadseemed to threaten. Filippo heard me patiently, but when I had done heshook his head.
"Why, all being as you say, should he work so wanton a destruction?" heasked stupidly, as if jealousy were not cause enough to drive an evilman to destroy that which he may not possess. "Nay, nay, your wits aredisordered. You remember that he looked at Madonna whilst she drank, andyou construe that into a proof that he had poisoned the cup she drankfrom. But then it is probable that we all looked at her in that samemoment."
"But not with such eyes as his," I insisted.
"Could he have administered the poison with his own hands?" asked thedoctor gravely.
"No," said I, "that were a difficult matter. But he might have bribed aservant to drop a powder in her wine."
"Why then," said he, "it should be an easy thing to find the servant. Doyou chance to remember who served the wine?"
"I remember," answered Filippo readily.
"Let the man be questioned; let him be racked if necessary. Thus shallyou probably arrive at a true knowledge; thus discover under whosedirections he was working."
It was the only thing to do, and Filippo sent me about it there andthen, telling me the servant in question was a Venetian of the name ofZabatello. If confirmation had been needed that this fellow had been thetool of the poisoner--there was no reason to suppose that he would havedone the thing to have served any ends of his own--that confirmationI had upon discovering that Zabatello was fled from Pesaro, leaving notrace behind him.
Men were sent out by the Lord Filippo in every direction to endeavourto find the rogue and bring him back. Whether they caught him or notseemed, after all
a little thing to me. She was dead; that was theone all-absorbing, all-effacing fact that took possession of my mind,blotting out all minor matters that might be concerned with it. Eventhe now assured fact that she had been poisoned was a thing that foundlittle room in my consideration on that day of my burning grief.
She was dead, dead, dead! The hideous phrase boomed again and againthrough my distracted mind. Compared with that overwhelming catastrophe,what signified to me the how or why or when she had died. She was dead,and the world was empty.
For hours I sat on the rocks, alone by the sea, on that stormy day ofDecember, and I indulged my grief where no prying eyes could witness it,amid the solitude of wild and angry Nature. And the moan and thud withwhich the great waves hurled themselves against the base of the blackrock on which I was perched afforded but a feeble echo of the storm thatraged and beat within my desolated soul.
She was dead, dead, dead! The waves seemed to shout it as they leaptup and spattered me with brine; the wind now moaned it piteously, nowshrieked it fiercely as it scudded by, wrapping its invisible coilsabout me, and seeming intent on tearing me from my resting-place.
Towards evening, at last, I rose, and skirting the Castle, I entered thetown, dishevelled and bedraggled, yet caring nothing what spectacle Imight afford. And presently a grim procession overtook me, and at sightof the black, cowled and visored figures that advanced in the luridlight of their wax torches, I fell on my knees there in the street, andso remained, my knees deep in the mud, my head bowed, until her saintedbody had been borne past. None heeded me. They bore her to San Domenico,and thither I followed presently, and in the shadow of one of thepillars of the aisle I crouched whilst the monks chanted their funerealpsalms.
The singing ended, the friars departed, and presently those of the Courtand the sight-seers from the streets began to leave the church. In anhour I was alone--alone with the beloved dead, and there, on my knees,I stayed, and whether I prayed or blasphemed during that horrid hour, mymemory will not let me say.
It may have been towards the third hour of night when at last Istaggered up--stiff and cramped from my long kneeling on the cold stone.Slowly, in a half-dazed condition, I move down the aisle and gained thedoor of the church. I essayed to open it. It resisted my efforts, andthen I realised that it was locked for the night.
The appreciation of my position afforded me not the slightest dismay. Onthe contrary, I think my feelings were rather of relief. I had not knownwhither I should repair--so distraught was my mood--and now chance hadsettled the matter for me by decreeing that I should remain.
I turned and slowly I paced back until I stood beside the great blackcatafalque, at each corner of which a tall wax taper was burning. Myfootsteps rang with a hollow sound through the vast, gloomy spaces ofthat cold, empty church; my very breathing seemed to find an echo in it.But these were not things to occupy my mind in such a season, no morethan was the icy cold by which I was half-numbed--yet of which I seemedto remain unconscious in the absorbing anguish that possessed me.
Near the foot of the bier there was a bench, and there I sat me down,and resting my elbows on my knees I took my dishevelled head between myfrozen hands. My thoughts were all of her whose poor murdered clay wasthere encased above me. I reviewed, I think, each scene of my life whereit had touched on hers; I evoked every word she had addressed to mesince first I had met her on the road to Cagli.
And anon my mood changed, and, from cold and frozen that it had beenby grief, it grew ablaze with the fire of anger and the lust to wreakvengeance upon him that had brought her to this condition. Let Filippofear to move without proofs, let him doubt such proofs as I had setbefore him and deem them overslender to warrant action. Such scruplesshould not serve to restrain me. I was no lukewarm brother. Here inPesaro I would remain until her poor body was delivered to the earth,and then I would set out upon a last emprise. Messer Ramiro del' Orcashould account to me for this vile deed.
There in the House of Peace I sat gnawing my hands and maturing mybloody plans whilst the night wore on. Later a still more frenzied moodobsessed me--a burning desire to look again upon the sweet face of her Ihad loved, the sainted visage of Madonna Paola. What was there to determe? Who was there to gainsay me?
I stood up and uttered that challenge aloud in my madness. My voiceechoed mournfully up the aisles, and the sound of the echo chilled me,yet my purpose gathered strength.
I advanced, and after a moment's pause, with the silver-broidered hem ofthe pall in my hands, I suddenly swept off that mantle of black cloth,setting up such a gust of wind as all but quenched the tapers. I caughtup the bench on which I had been sitting, and, dragging it forward, Imounted it and stood now with my breast on a level with the coffin-lid.I laid hands on it and found it unfastened. Without thought or care ofhow I went about the thing, I raised it and let it crash over to theground. It fell on the stone flags with a noise like that of thunder,which boomed and reverberated along the gloomy vault above.
A figure, all in purest white, lay there under my eyes, the face coveredby a veil. With deepest reverence, and a prayer to her sainted soul toforgive the desecration of my loving hands, I tremblingly drew that veilaside. How beautiful she was in the calm peace of death! She lay therelike one gently sleeping, the faintest smile upon her lips, and as Ilooked it seemed hard to believe that she was truly dead. Why, herlips had lost nothing of their colour; they were as rosy red--or nearlyso--as ever I had seen them in life. How could this be? The lips of thedead are wont to put on a livid hue. I stared a moment, my reverence andgrief almost effaced by the intensity of my wonder. This face, so ivorypale, wore not the ashen aspect of one that would never wake again.There was a warmth about that pallor. And then I caught my nether lipin my teeth until it bled, and it is a miracle that I did not scream,seeing how overwrought was my condition.
For it had seemed to me that the draperies on her bosom had slightlymoved, a gentle, almost imperceptible heave as if she breathed. Ilooked, and there it came again.
God! into what madness was I come that my eyes could so deceive me? Itwas the draught that stirred the air about the church and blew greatshrouds of wax adown the taper's yellow sides. I manned myself to a moresober mood, and looked again.
And now my doubts were all dispelled. I knew that I had mastered anyerrant fancy, and that my eyes were grown wise and discriminating, and Iknew, too, that she lived. Her bosom slowly rose and fell; the colourof her lips, the hue of her cheeks confirmed the assurance that shebreathed. The poison had failed in its work.
I paused a second yet to ponder. That morning her appearance had beensuch that the physician had been deceived by it, and had pronounced hercold. Yet now there were these signs of life. What could it portendbut that the effects of the poison were passing off and that she wasrecovering?
In the wild madness of joy that sent the blood drumming and beatingthrough my brain, my first impulse was to run for help. Then I bethoughtme of the closed doors, and I realised that no matter how I shouted nonewould hear me. I must succour her myself as best I could, and meanwhileshe must be protected from the chill air of that December night inthat church that was colder than the tomb. I had my cloak, a heavy,serviceable garment; and if more were needed, there was the pall which Ihad removed, and which lay in a heap about the legs of my bench.
I leaned forward, and passing my hand under her head, I gently raisedit. Then slipping it downwards, I thrust my arm after it until I had herround the waist in a firm grip. Thus I raised her from the coffin,and the warmth of her body on my arm, the ready, supple bending of herlimbs, were so many added proofs that she was not dead.
Gently and reverently I lifted her in my arms, an intoxication of holyjoy pervading me, and the prayers falling faster from my lips than everthey had done since as a lad I had recited them at my mother's knee. Amoment I laid her on the bench, whilst I divested myself of my cloak.Then suddenly I paused, and stood listening, holding my breath.
Steps were advancing towards the door.
> My first impulse was to rush forward and call to those who came,shouting my news and imploring their help. Then a sudden, an almostinstinctive suspicion caught and chilled me. Who was it came at such anhour? What could any man seek in the Church of San Domenico at dead ofnight? Was the church indeed their goal, or were they but passers-by?
That last question went not long unanswered. The steps came nearer,whilst I stood appalled, my skin roughening like a dog's. They halted atthe door. Something heavy hurtled against it.
A voice, the voice of Ramiro del' Orca--I knew it upon theinstant--reached my ears which concentration had rendered superacute.
"It is locked, Baldassare. Get out those tools of yours and force it."
My wits were working now at fever-pace. It may be that I am swift ofthought beyond the ordinary man, or it may be that what then came to mewas either a flash of inspiration or the conclusion to which I leapt byinstinct. But in that moment the whole plot of Madonna's poisoning wasrevealed to me. Poisoned she had been--aye, but by some drug that didbut produce for a little while the outward appearance of death so trulysimulated as to deceive the most experienced of doctors. I had heardof such poisons, and here, in very truth, was one of them at work. Hisvengeance on her for her indifference to his suit was not so clumsyand primitive as that of simply slaying her. He had, by his infernalartifice, intended, secretly, to bear her off. To-morrow when men founda broken church-door and a violated bier, they would set the sacrilegedown to some wizard who had need of the body for his dark practices ofmagic.
I cursed myself in that hour that I had not earlier been moved to peerinto her coffin whilst yet there might have been time to have saved her.Now? The sweat stood out in beads upon my brow. At that door there were,to judge by the sound of footsteps and of voices, some three or four menbesides Messer Ramiro. For only weapon I had my dagger. What could Ido with that to defend her? Ramiro's plan would suffer no frustrationthrough my discovery; when to-morrow the sacrilege was discovered thecold body of Lazzaro Biancomonte lying beside the desecrated bier wouldbe but an item in the work of profanation they would find--an item thatnowise would modify the conclusion to which I anticipated they wouldcome.